Consulta BIN

What is Consulta BIN?

Consulta BIN is a card data lookup service that identifies credit or debit card characteristics based on the BIN (the first 6 or 9 digits of the card) and returns information that allows you to validate the data entered on the payment screen.

Card brand: card brand name;
Card type: credit, debit, or multiple (credit and debit);
Card nationality: foreign or domestic;
Corporate card: whether the card is corporate or not;
Issuing bank: issuer code and name;
Prepaid card: whether the card is prepaid or not.

What is the impact of using it in my business?

With the information returned by Consulta BIN, the merchant can take actions such as:

Offer discounts and promotions for specific cards;
Make the payment page more modern with automatic card brand identification from the BIN input and avoid errors due to incorrect brand selection;
Confirm the card type, for example, identify a pure debit card and notify the cardholder if they try to make a credit transaction.

Advantages: provides data for the merchant to take actions to convert sales and can be used before authorization.

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Important
Consulta BIN is a data consultation and enrichment service aimed at supporting decision-making and improving conversion rates, and should not be treated as a critical transactional part of the flows. To ensure resilience and operational continuity, it is recommended that its integration is non-blocking, allowing the main processing to proceed even in cases of timeout, error, or service unavailability, adopting a fail-open strategy. The Consulta BIN response should be used as complementary information, with well-defined timeouts, proper exception handling, and fallback mechanisms, following best practices for fault-tolerant architectures.

How to use Consulta BIN?

Based on the result of Consulta BIN, you can develop features in your checkout to improve usability for shoppers, helping with cart recovery and better conversion for your merchant.

1. Avoid errors related to card brand or card type:

Consulta BIN returns the correct card brand since it is associated with the card brands' BIN database; this is a much safer method than relying on algorithms in the form;
In your merchant's checkout, you can create a message to notify the shopper if they are using a debit card when they should be using a credit card.

2. Offer online cart recovery

You can develop a flow in your checkout so that, if a card entered on the payment screen is multiple (credit and debit), your merchant can retain the card data and, if the credit transaction fails, automatically offer the shopper a debit transaction with the same card.

3. Alert about international or prepaid cards

Consulta BIN in the cart can indicate an attempt to use an international or prepaid card. If your merchant does not want to accept international or prepaid card payments, you can configure your checkout to inform the shopper that the merchant does not accept the card entered.

What not to do?

Don't perform excessive queries unless they are linked to a transaction or card storage.

How to test Consulta BIN in sandbox?

To test Consulta BIN, follow the instructions in Consulta BIN in sandbox. In the test environment, each of the first six digits will return a corresponding simulated result.

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Warning

Some BINs or card brands may not return card information;

If the API displays error message 323, it means Consulta BIN is not enabled. Please contact Cielo Support;

The service is subject to commercial conditions and may incur additional costs.